Supporting Inland California’s Bioeconomy through Innovation and Development
September 9, 2024
Introduction
California’s Great Central Valley and Inland Empire are indispensable segments of the state, national and global food systems. But the long-term viability of the state’s agricultural economy is threatened by a range of human and environmental factors, including dwindling groundwater, climate change, labor shortages, and extreme socio-economic inequality. Absent prompt and effective responses, these stresses will imperil the California’s agricultural preeminence. Given ongoing federal dysfunction, the State must determine its own path forward. Indeed, these threats can be leveraged by policy and business leaders to expand opportunities for the State’s inland regions by doing what California does best – innovating its way to success and, in so doing, achieving global leadership in agricultural technology and the future bioeconomy.
Inland California Development Project and the emerging bioeconomy
Supported by a wide array of influential business, policy, and economic organizations, researchers and policy analysts from four UC campuses (Berkeley, Davis, Merced, Riverside) have come together to address the key challenges to Inland California’s economic viability and ensure that it remains viable into the future. The core thesis of this project is that the use of advanced biotechnology, information technology, robotics, and other technological means can help transform the agricultural economy into one that thrives on renewable resources – a sustainable “bioeconomy” – in which waste is minimized, workers are prioritized, productivity is more effectively utilized, and water is managed effectively.
The Inland California project is designed to proceed in three stages:
Stage 1 considers three countries that have successfully created opportunities and policies to support their rural areas in a worker- and climate-friendly fashion: Japan, Israel, and Denmark.
Stage 2 considers how these principles might be harnessed to create a forward-looking bioeconomy, one capable of balancing human needs with productivity and renewable resources.
Stage 3/Conclusion: The work done in the first two stages will culminate in a set of actionable recommendations, which will be presented to State officials as well as business, economic, and NGO leaders in a concluding conference in Sacramento, policy papers, and a book.
California’s future Bioeconomy – why California is the right place this is the right time
California has distinctive advantages in fashioning innovative developmental strategies.
First, California has unparalleled research, educational, financial, and business infrastructure and ecosystems that have fueled transformative technological innovations for decades.
Second, this world class engine of innovation is effectively next door to the vast and productive inland agricultural sector with a long history of entrepreneurial innovation.
Third, California government has the institutional capacity, material resources, and expertise to engage in policy-making and regulatory interventions that can incentivize innovation.
Fourth, the development of a legal and policy framework to encourage agtech innovation and its commercial deployment will embody California’s commitments to environmental protection and stewardship (e.g., measures to combat carbon emissions and climate change), while making significant contributions to meeting these goals.
Why this project matters
The differences among these forms of innovation indicate the necessity of making the right choices. Failure to choose—and choose wisely—will put California on a default path towards a secular decline of its agriculture, economic stagnation, and continually rising levels of inequality and immiseration of the agricultural workforce and the inland population.
Prof. John Cioffi, UC Riverside
Prof. Thomas Harmon, UC Merced
Prof. Martin Kenney (UC Davis)
N. Bruce Pickering, Ph.D.
Prof. Anne Visser (UC Davis)
Prof. David Zilberman, UC Berkeley
Prof. John Zysman, UC Berkeley